In the Netherlands human trafficking became a matter of public and political importance in the 1990s, following international concern about the issue. When speaking of trafficking for sexual exploitation, however, civil concern and activism against trafficking in women already existed long before that, notably in the forms of a moral panic about “white slavery” at the turn of the 19th century (e.g. Doezema, 1999) and concern
about Asian women coming to work in the Dutch sex industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The Foundation Action Group against Trafficking in Women (Stichting Actiegroep tegen Vrouwenhandel, abbreviated: STV) originated in 1987 and fought trafficking in women in the slipstream of the general movement for women’s emancipation. In the 1990s, after
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Netherlands saw an increase in East European women working in the Dutch sex industry – a trend other west European countries witnessed as well. The Netherlands became the first country to legally differentiate between women who voluntarily worked in prostitution, and those being forced to do so. Several organisations pleaded in the 1990s for a national rapporteur on human trafficking, who eventually was appointed in 000 following The Hague Declaration of the European Union in 1997. In 017, on its 0th anniversary,
STV changed its name into CoMensha (Foundation Coordination Centre Human Trafficking) to express the broadened area of concern from trafficking in women for sexual exploitation to different kinds of trafficking in persons, affecting both men, women and children. At present, labour trafficking as well as trafficking for other purposes (e.g. organ harvesting) fall within the scope of the Coordination Centre, at least formally. We can, however, safely claim that trafficking for sexual exploitation, by far, draws most of the civil and law enforcement’s attention when compared to other forms of trafficking, such as labour exploitation.
Labour exploitation, as a manifestation of trafficking in human beings, only recently has received attention in the Netherlands. As late as 005, labour exploitation was criminalised in the Dutch Criminal Code as a result of international legal obligations (Law of 9 December 004, STB. 004, 645). However, at that time it was not clear at all whether and, if so, to what extent labour exploitation posed an actual problem in the Dutch labour market (Parliamentary Paper II, 00/04, 991, ; see also the research of Van der Leun & Vervoorn, 004). Until then, the shadow side of the Dutch labour market mostly fell within the sphere of illegal work and workers, and connected fields of labour law and immigration
1 We thank all our respondents for their time and energy, without which this research would not have succeeded. We, furthermore, thank research assistants Marianne Sijtsma and Tineke Hendrikse for their contributions to this project.
See: http://www.comensha.nl/pagina/0jaar, retrieved 08/0/018.
See: https://www.nationaalrapporteur.nl/Over/geschiedenis/, retrieved 08/0/018.
Brenda C.M. Oude Breuil, Anne-Jetske L.M. Schaap and Anna Merz
law (Van der Leun, 010). However, over the past decade, and especially in the past couple of years, the attention towards labour exploitation in the Netherlands increased considerably. This is illustrated, for example, by the fact that since 014 it is one of the priorities of the Task Force on trafficking in human beings (THB) (see also section 1). Moreover, one of the priorities when the Netherlands held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 016 was increasing EU efforts against THB for labour exploitation. In the same spirit, the Dutch Inspectorate for Social Affairs and Employment (ISZW) developed a new program to tackle labour exploitation in 017 (see section 4 in this report). Also, efforts of NGO’s such as FairWork in tackling THB in the Netherlands can be mentioned in this regard.4
In Dutch criminal law, multiple offences criminalise conduct that may fall under the definition of “trafficking in human beings” as adhered to in this report. One can think of specific provisions of labour law, immigration law, sexual offences, offences against the person or fraud offences. Yet the offence that is considered to be the core offence of THB and that is used to implement the most important international legal obligations on THB for the Netherlands, is laid down in article 7f of the Dutch Criminal Code (DCC).
Article 7f DCC is a very long and complex provision. Under influence of both various international legal obligations and national (policy) developments, mostly in the field of prostitution, the provision has come to encompass many paragraphs and subparagraphs that criminalise various forms and stages of human trafficking (Alink & Wiarda, 010).5 In
short, article 7f DCC criminalises the actual trafficking in human beings and trafficking in minors with a view to exploitation – here the definition closely resembles the definition of THB in the Palermo Protocol – conduct close to the actual exploitation and the actual exploitation, profiting from the exploitation, and forcing or inducing profits from exploitation. Minors are especially protected in the provision at various points.
Exploitation – which is central to the various forms of THB laid down in article 7f DCC – includes, but is not limited to, the exploitation of another person in prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation, forced or compulsory labour or services including mendicancy, slavery, slavery-like practices, servitude and exploitation of criminal activities. For the interpretation of these concepts, the international instruments that have influenced the development of article 7f DCC and case law, both at
4 See: https://www.fairwork.nu/wie_zijn_wij/, retrieved 09/0/018.
5 These international legal obligations that have been of influence on the development and wording of article 7f DCC stem from, amongst others: International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic Paris, 4 May 1910; International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children Geneva, 0 September 191; International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age Geneva, 11 October 19, The Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery 196; the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol); the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings; the Council Framework Decision 00/69/JHA of 19 July 00 on combating trafficking in human beings; Directive 011/6/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 011 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, and replacing Council Framework Decision 00/69/JHA.
the national and at the international level, are important.6 Yet, article
7f DCC is broader and covers more forms of exploitation.7 In order to
determine whether there is a situation of exploitation, case law shows that various factors that may point to exploitation should be weighed.8
An analysis of both national and international case law shows that these factors include: the type of the work, the duration, the working conditions and, if applicable, also the housing conditions, the restrictions that follow from the work, the received income, the economic profit for the offender, the age of the victim, and the level of involuntariness and unavoidability. Dutch standards function as the benchmark in weighing all these factors. For example, one could take the Dutch legal minimum wage into account (for the analysis, see Schaap, 017). The upshot of this is that, for example, in case a woman used to work voluntarily in prostitution while retaining some freedom of movement, the situation can still be regarded as exploitative if other circumstances (e.g. the use of force in combination with giving up her income) tip the scales to exploitation.
At this point, it is important to note that article 7f DCC carries the label “trafficking in human beings,” but is based on a broad conception of trafficking of human beings that includes but is broader than the definition of THB provided by the Palermo Protocol. Moreover, the legislative work on human trafficking allows for a broader criminal protection than the Netherlands is legally obliged to implement following all international instruments on THB the Netherlands is bound by (Alink & Wiarda, 010: 14), as is illustrated by the definition of exploitation as set out above. Yet, this is also the consequence of the conduct that is criminalised under article 7f DCC such as the profiting from the exploitation laid down in subsection 6 which brings people normally operating in the background of the exploitation within the reach of the criminal law. This subsection has a purely national origin (See Parliamentary Papers II 1996/97, 547, , 9). Since article 7f DCC is at the core of the criminal prosecutions in the Netherlands, the conduct criminalised in the provision as such is reflected in our collected data.9 Yet, in this regard it
must be noted that in case law, even though the Dutch Supreme Court has provided more guidance over the past couple of years, article 7f DCC is not always interpreted in a consistent manner nor is the guidance of the Supreme Court applied in a consistent manner in lower case law (Van der Leun 01; Nationaal Rapporteur 017. In the context of labour exploitation see also Schaap, 017, chapter 5).
6 A more detailed discussion of all these forms of exploitation goes beyond the scope of this contribution. For now, it suffices to know that their meaning can be obtained by considering for example the case law and guidance of the ECtHR on art. 4 of the ECHR, which lays down the prohibition of slavery and forced labour.
7 As is apparent from the text article 7f () DCC. See A-G Knigge in his conclusion of Supreme Court 7 October 009, ELCLI:NL:HR:009:BI7099.
8 Supreme Court 7 October 009, ECLI:NL:HR:009:BI7099; See also Supreme Court 4 No-vember 015, ECLI:NL:HR:015:09 with regard to weighing these factors in case a minor is involved.
9 This research focused, as made clear later in this section (under the heading Data Collection), on human trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation. We framed these two offences conform the National Rapporteur, who differentiates exploitation within the sex industry and exploita-tion outside of the sex industry – the latter consisting of the modalities labour exploitaexploita-tion, forced services and exploitation of criminal activities. Our research, besides sexual exploitation mainly focused on labour exploitation, although the dividing line between the two may often be vague.
Neither prostitution nor the profiting from prostitution are illegal in the Netherlands. Since the lifting of the ban on brothels in 000 one can legally run a prostitution business, provided that one has a licence and complies with the rules implied in it. Nevertheless, the “criminogenic” character of the sex industry has been emphasised in media and political discourse since the end of the last decennium. More repressive local measures towards (visible) prostitution have been observed ever since. Self-help organisations for sex workers, health-related NGO’s, and critical academic scholars claim that the increasingly repressive measures and the equation of sex work with human trafficking are the result of a Dutch moral panic on, firstly, the phenomenon of the so called “lover-boys” (e.g. Bovenkerk et al., 006; Outshoorn, 01), and secondly on human trafficking.10 The latter started with two large, international trafficking
“signal crimes” (Innes, 014) called the ”Sneep” and the “Koolvis” cases (respectively in 008 and 009).11 Since 009, the Dutch government has
been debating a new law on prostitution (”Law regulating prostitution and suppressing abuse in the sex industry”), which should address this supposed criminogenic character. It imposes stricter regulation of prostitution, for instance through an obligation for sex workers to register with local authorities and the lifting of the legal age to work in the sex industry from 18 to 1. It also investigates the possibility to make the client of prostitution punishable by law, if he would have reasonable grounds to be aware that the sex worker is a victim of trafficking.1
This particular framing of the sex industry as directly intertwined with human trafficking and exploitation has caused a sharp turn away from a tolerant approach towards, and progressive legalisation of prostitution, to “adopting a strict regulation of all prostitution” (Outshoorn, 01: ) in the Netherlands. This is most to the discontent of sex worker organisations, which claim that stricter policies will encourage sex workers to go underground, thereby making incidences of exploitation ever less visible (Oude Breuil & Siegel, 01; Gibly, 01).
Data collection
For this report three research methods were combined: desk research on relevant academic studies and policy papers; semi-structured interviews with law enforcement, governmental and non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders related to THB; and file analysis of police and court cases. In total, 11 interviews with a total number of 17 experts were conducted.1
Most interviews were face-to-face and semi-structured. Three interviews
10 See Siegel, 015 or Oude Breuil & Siegel, 01 for the Netherlands or Weitzer, 007 for an international perspective on the moral panic on human trafficking for sexual exploitation. 11 See on the Sneep case: https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/legislation-and-case-law-case-law/
sneep-case_en, and on the Koolvis case: https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/legislation-and-case-law-case-law/koolvis-case_en, retrieved 08/0/018.
1 We see an anticipation of the eventual adoption of this law already reflected in the so-called Valkenburg vice case (Valkenburgse zedenzaak) tried in 016, which manifested a strong emphasis on the prosecution of over 0 clients of a 16-year-old trafficking victim. See: https:// www.om.nl/onderwerpen/valkenburgse/, retrieved 08/0/018.
1 The sources have been coded in order to preserve their anonymity. The first two letters of the code indicate the country, “E” indicates an expert. The description of the background of the individual sources referenced can be found in the list of interviewees in the references section.
were held by telephone, due to time constraints on both the respondents’ and the researchers’ side, and were, where necessary, followed up by email-correspondence. The interviews where transcribed and analysed by the Dutch country research team. This shared analysis ensured researcher triangulation, which enhances the validity of the project findings.
Besides the desk-research and interviews 14 (confidential) cases of THB for sexual exploitation were examined, next to 11 publicly available court reports on THB for labour exploitation.14 The 14 cases of sexual exploitation
cannot be generalised, as they have a regional bias, due to the fact that we could only access these particular files. However, we chose as diverse set of cases as possible in terms of the following variables: size of the trafficking network; domestic/foreign case; number of perpetrators/victims; modus operandi et cetera, in order to prevent a selection bias in those respects. Initially a large sample of court files of sexual exploitation that happened within the Region Middle Netherlands in the last 5 years were screened and 11 cases were selected for content analysis. The last two cases (NL-CC1 and 14) were related, in the sense that the same victims appeared in them, although the traffickers did not seem to be related. The 11 cases consisted of 19 files, meaning that in some cases, multiple suspects, who were separately tried before court, were implied. Thus, by “case” we refer to an incidence of exploitation in a certain exploitative setting. The number of files per case does not say anything about the number of victims (one suspect could have one or more victims, just like two or more suspects can have, in theory, one or more victims). It does say something, however, about the complexity of the trafficking network: cases with more files are generally concerning larger networks of greater complexity. Next to the 11 court cases of the Region Middle Netherlands (NL-CC4 to CC14), we added another confidential cases of our police respondents (NL-PC1 to PC). For reasons of anonymity we cannot elaborate on the concerned region.
The files on sexual exploitation (cases 1 to 14: PC1 to CC14 on sexual exploitation) were different in content and richness from the information in the court reports (CRP1 to CRP11 on labour exploitation), which is not surprising as the court and police files were confidential data for which we needed clearance, whereas the court reports were published and, therefore, publicly available.15 The depth of the available information in
both kinds of files, however, was not a problem in this research, as the files were not to be compared. THB for labour and sexual exploitation are two such different modalities that they needed to be analysed separately, anyway. The files were coded and analysed separately and will be separately treated in the report under each heading. See section for an elaboration on the cases.
Using three different methods – desk-research, semi-structured interviewing and file analysis – ensured methodological and data triangulation, which enhances the validity in qualitative research.
14 The cases have been coded and are referred to in the text with their code; they are listed in the “List of studies cases” table in the references section.
The Netherlands serves both as a destination and source country for human trafficking and is among the five countries of western Europe recording the highest number of trafficking victims (Shelley, 014). Human trafficking is classified along two main axes by authorities like the National Rapporteur on human trafficking (Nationaal Rapporteur Mensenhandel en Seksueel Geweld tegen Kinderen): sexual versus non-sexual exploitation on the one hand, and domestic versus cross-border forms of human trafficking on the other hand. This results in a distinction of four types of human trafficking. Domestic sexual exploitation oftentimes concerns exploitation via the so-called lover-boy method, in which young males feign a love relationship to make (often minor, Dutch) girls dependent on them and drag them into sexual exploitation. Secondly, in cross-border sexual exploitation foreigners, foremost women from east European countries like Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, or west African women are victimised by criminal groups that have a certain level of organisation. They are legally or illegally transferred to the Netherlands and put to work in the sex industry. Sexual exploitation in the twenty-first century is oftentimes facilitated by the Internet; likewise, political and law enforcement awareness about digital forms of sexual exploitation is increasing and must be further addressed (Nationaal Rapporteur 017a). The third and fourth type of THB distinguished are domestic and cross-border exploitation outside the sex industry. Labour exploitation spans both categories.
Foreign victims of labour exploitation are typically from east European countries and Asia. Based on the statistics of the National Rapporteur, the sectors in which labour exploitation occurs the most seem to be constantly changing. This, however, is probably caused by the impact of the detection and prosecution of large cases on the statistics. Typical risk sectors include agriculture, forestry, the catering industry and housework including au pairs. Considering the predominance of law enforcing institutions’ attention to exploitation within the sex-industry (Bos et al., 016; Heemskeerk & Rijken, 011, Smit, 011), we can safely assume that the number of labour exploitation cases hides a considerable dark figure. In view of the migration and refugee inflows and deregulation of the labour markets, labour exploitation is, according to a study conducted by the ISZW, expected to increase in the upcoming years (Inspectie SZW 017). Between 011 and 015, 41 investigations on labour exploitation were conducted by the Inspectorate SZW. Seventeen investigations were completed in 016 (Inspectie SZW 017).
Victims of human trafficking are registered at the Coordination Centre for Human Trafficking (Coördinatiecentrum Mensenhandel, hereafter: CoMensha); their numbers concern notifications of possible victims of human trafficking. CoMensha is responsible for the national reporting, registration and coordination of human trafficking victims known to different authorities or persons. The number of registered victims is declining in the last years, from 1.87 in 01 to 95 registered victims in
1. MARKET OvERvIEw
016.16 In the period between 01 and 016, about 60% of registered
victims belong to the first two categories of human trafficking, pertaining to sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking is therefore, according to registries at CoMensha, more prevalent in the Netherlands than exploitation outside the sex industry. The group of sexually exploited victims comprises 4.9% Dutch nationals in 016; compared to 56.1% foreigners.
In total, 61.% of all registered victims of human trafficking at CoMensha in 016 are foreigners. Cross-border exploitation outside the sex industry is superior in numbers to domestic exploitation outside the sex industry (90.1% of victims outside the sex industry were foreigners in period between 01 and 016). Of the 44 registered victims outside the sex industry, labour exploitation counts for 8.5%. The rest percentage concerns other forms of exploitation (such as organ trafficking or the exploitation of criminal activities of minors). The group of victims outside the sex industry, in contrast to victims of sexual exploitation, is comprising equally of men and women.
The national report on human trafficking points out that the assessed number of victims of human trafficking is very high. The National Rapporteur recently published, for the first time, an estimation of the total amount of victims besides their usual numbers on registered victims of human trafficking. It is estimated that annually between 5,000 and 7,500 persons become victims of human trafficking in the Netherlands (Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a). On average, one can therefore speak of 6,50 human trafficking victims each year. The number of registered victims at CoMensha is thus, supposedly, about six times smaller than the estimated total number, which implies a high dark number of victims. Estimations are based on the method of MSE (multiple systems estimation), which allows for estimations of the number of victims that do not appear in official databases based on how registered victims are distributed across various registries (e.g. police, Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, care institutions and regional coordinators for human trafficking). The MSE-estimation combines numbers of registered victims of human trafficking in a 6-year period. Considering the fact that generally more public and law enforcement attention is paid to sexual exploitation than to labour exploitation (or other forms of human trafficking, such as organ trade), we can safely assume that not all forms of human trafficking have the same dark number. Thus, the estimates should be read with caution, or even scepticism.
According to the National Rapporteur (017b) an increasing proportion of human trafficking remains out of sight due to shifts in enforcement priori-ties and a growing lack in expertise and capacity of responsible authori-ties. The number of registered cases at the Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie, hereafter: PPS) serves as another indicator of this negative trend. Whereas in 014, 8 cases were registered, this number decreased by % to 0 cases in 016 of which in 10 cases a sentence was passed. Additionally, 0% of cases were dropped due to insufficient
16 Both numbers do not consider victims exclusively reported by KMar who, since the judgment of the Supreme Court of 17 May 016, belong to the group of sub- cases without exploitation (e.g. cross-border prostitution) and can no longer be regarded as THB.
evidence in 015 (Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a). The developments say little or nothing about the extent of or trends in the phenomenon itself as they might correlate with, for instance, investigative capacity and priori-tisation. The dwindling of case numbers, the drop of the conviction rate and the average duration of imposed unconditional custodial sentences might also indicate that the criminal justice system conveys a too broad or vague concept of human trafficking (van Kempen, 017: ).
An increase in the available budget in 017 and 018 should, according to the National Rapporteur (Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a: 16) strengthen and intensify the tackling of human trafficking17 and the (upcoming) new
law on prostitution (“Law regulating prostitution and suppressing abuse in the sex industry”) should further help combat human trafficking and organised crime within the Dutch sex industry, it is claimed, as it would allow for stricter regulation of prostitution (see Introduction). The firm belief, however, that these measures will lead to an increased control over abusive conditions in the Dutch sex industry is refuted by self-help organisations and critical scholars, who consider further stigmatisation and criminalisation of the sex industry as a deterioration of labour conditions and transparency in the industry.
Since the lifting of the ban on brothels in 000, legal prostitution in the Netherlands has comprised of licensed companies, like window prostitution, sex clubs or escort companies on the one hand, and non-licensed companies or independent prostitutes in municipalities with no licence obligation, on the other hand (Daalder, 007; Nationaal Rapporteur, 017b; Outshoorn, 01). Paradoxically, prostitution at private, indoor locations, as one of the most invisible forms of prostitution, has been and remains the most common form of sexual exploitation in the latest human trafficking report (41% of 1.8 registered victims of sexual exploitation between 01 – 016 in which the specific sector of prostitution is known; Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a). This argument further bolsters the plea for a new prostitution law, which also aims to put escort services under stricter regulation. However, the increase might very well have to do precisely with the more repressive stance on prostitution, as the current diminishing of legal and visible places to do sex work (e.g. legal window prostitution areas have been closed in parts of The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and several smaller cities in the Netherlands, see: Siegel, 015) could have urged sex workers to switch to less visible and less regulated settings. The result is a market of a few legal (licenced and non-licenced, if a licence is not necessary) and monitored sex industries, and a supposedly numerically bigger share of illegal or criminal sex enterprises. Another remarkable trend, according to the public prosecuting office and an NGO that assists individuals confronted with domestic, sexual and honour-based violence, is the growing involvement of very young girls in prostitution, sometimes as young as 11 years old. The NGO employee, quoted from a national news website, attributes this growth to the importance of internet and social media, which make it easier to recruit girls for prostitution (NOS 018).
17 Bos, Loyens, Nagy and Oude Breuil (016) similarly claim that in the case of trafficking in minors for exploitation of criminal activities, the expertise and capacities are lacking to properly identify and treat such cases.
The Netherlands has an “integrated approach” of combatting human trafficking, referring to a focus on prevention, protection, repression and cooperation of different government and non-government organisations in human trafficking policy (Harbers 8/11/017), including administrative enforcement, but with criminal prosecution as a keystone (Alink & Wiarda, 010). In the context of this integrated approach, there seems to be an informal division of tasks, according to which the Dutch police sees criminal prosecution of traffickers as their main goal, leaving the protection of victims mainly to civil organisations and NGOs (Oude Breuil et al., 011: 7). With the Task Force Human Trafficking (Task Force Aanpak Mensenhandel), a collaboration of different parties involved in combating human trafficking was introduced in 008 (Heemskeerk & Rijken, 011; Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a). In the Task Force, each party has its own responsibilities when it comes to tackling human trafficking and/or supporting victims. This division of tasks carries the risk of confusing victims and other involved parties as to which partner organisation they should turn to. Moreover, it implies a risk of undiscovered cases if cooperation between involved parties is ineffective and indications for human trafficking are not recognised (Nationaal Rapporteur, 017a). The “barrier model” is (still) the leading policy approach in combatting human trafficking in the Netherlands. In this approach, based on situational prevention theory, different institutions (such as the tax authority, municipalities, police, chamber of commerce, housing corporations, et cetera) work together to “mount barriers” with the purpose of disrupting the human trafficking business process.
With regard to labour exploitation, the present research (interviews and file research) revealed two prevalent forms in the Netherlands. Firstly, organised labour exploitation in companies in which temporary employment agencies are often (but not necessarily) a facilitating player. Characteristic of this type of labour exploitation is the involvement of multiple victims, mainly from eastern Europe or Turkey. Secondly, there is one-on-one labour exploitation in cases of au pairs or smaller businesses like restaurants. According to our respondents (NL-E8, NL-E1), organised labour exploitation is more prevalent in the Netherlands. However, cases of exploiting au pairs are increasing or becoming more visible in recent years (NL-E14).
Both types of labour exploitation can often be regarded as family
businesses, as suspects of labour exploitation usually operate with
their spouse, siblings or within their extended family (NL-E8, NL-E1, NL-E14). Another remarkable characteristic is the exploitation of fellow countrymen. Labour exploitation can thus be characterised as an
intra-ethnic phenomenon. In the case of the exploitation of au pairs, this
would mean that for instance a Brazilian woman living in the Netherlands organises young women to migrate from Brazil to the Netherlands for
2. MARKET STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION
housekeeping jobs (NL- CRP6). According to FairWork and the Inspectorate SZW (NL-E8, NL-E1), exploiters are either own family members or acquaintances in cases of one-on-one labour exploitation or “dubious temporary employment agencies” (NL-E9, NL-E14) in the case of organised labour exploitation. Additionally, labour migrants are oftentimes put to work behind the scene or closed doors (cleaning, cooking, au pair) or out of public view (seasonal workers).
The recruitment modus operandi can often be described as an
“inclusive” package with which recruits are approached. In these
all-inclusive packages transport from the country of origin, work place and accommodation in the Netherlands as well as transport from housing to the work place are arranged by the exploiting parties or accomplices. They create a situation of total isolation, dependency, and control. In the case of a Chinese restaurant, the victim was accommodated in a room above the restaurant, which was secured and controlled by an alarm system that was activated at night, to which the victim did not know the code. Consequently, the victim was effectively restricted in his freedom of movement (NL-CRP7).
Travel to the Netherlands is arranged in some cases. In other cases, workers arrange and pay for the travel themselves. The funds required for the travel are oftentimes either borrowed from relatives or future employers (NL-E1). The travel sum may then be used as raison d’être for a form of bonded labour. Accordingly, the migrant workers are in a stringent debt relationship with their exploiters. Debts are paid off gradually through later job earnings. Although such a system might give the impression that migrant workers are not necessarily forced to enter “fortress Europe” to work under hazardous conditions (Andrees, 008), some form of coercion, or profiting from someone’s (financially instable and therefore) vulnerable position, is employed at this stage, and is further induced by false promises. Moreover, the
line between poor working conditions and labour exploitation is often blurry (Hiah & Staring, 01; Van Ellemeet, 007), which can
partly explain our finding that victims and suspects do not always identify themselves as such (NL-E1). That is, they legitimise the act of exploitation through culturally shared expectations on working conditions (Hiah & Staring, 01).
Temporary employment agencies either operate in workers’ countries of
origin or, recently becoming more prevalent, the Netherlands (NL-E8). In the first case, they advertise for better work in the Netherlands and profit from more deprived working conditions and lower salaries in the country of origin. Labour migrants are easy targets due to their limited proficiency in the Dutch language, their lack of knowledge of Dutch laws and rights, their limited access to the legal labour market and therefore – when illegally working – a lack of alternatives and a general fear of authorities (Van Ellemeet, 007). The focus of employment agencies is usually on seasonal work, the Inspectorate for Social Affairs and Employment (NL-E1) points out. If work is provided through temporary employment agencies, usually two parties are involved: the agency itself and a hiring company. In that case, exploitation can take place on both ends,
meaning that the temporary employment agency as well as the hiring company profit by extracting money from the migrants. The interviews (NL-E14) have shown that the lines between the two companies can be blurred to the extent that one party is involved rather than two, as both the agency and hiring company might be owned by one and the same person. Family businesses which cooperate are another possibility. In these constructions, different family members own different businesses involved in the commission of labour exploitation (e.g. NL-CRP5).
With regard to human trafficking for sexual exploitation, based on the studied cases (NL-PC1 to NL-CC14) we can conclude that it is elucidating to categorise the encountered “business models” in four main categories or typologies.
The first category concerns domestic human trafficking cases, in which there is generally no international component, nor an extended, organised
trafficking network. The pimps are Dutch young men – according to
some respondents (e.g. NL-E14; NL-E1, , , 5 & 6; see also: Verwijs et al 011) often with a migrant background – who have only one or a limited number of girls working for them. Although the pimp might have friends who are also into pimping, they are generally not part of an organised trafficking ring or network, in the sense that no sophisticated distribution of tasks exists. The modus operandi is known in the Netherlands as the
lover-boy method. This refers to the strategy of grooming and socially
isolating the victim, so that she falls in love and becomes emotionally dependent on the pimp (Verwijs et al 011). Victims are generally Dutch girls who are of minor age when the grooming begins. They are often easy targets, namely girls who have limited intellectual abilities or mild psychological disorders (e.g. NL-CC8, and this also came forward in several of the expert interviews), grew up with dysfunctional family relations, were interned at youth institutions (see also: Verwijs et al 011) or have low self-esteem. The pimp will specifically target such girls, making them believe that “love” is mutual. Through a narrative of him being indebted to a friend, which can be settled if she has sex with the friend, she will be drawn into sexual exploitation in the confined space of an apartment. Having sex with the pimp’s friends will become a more regular activity she is convinced or coerced into. This evolves into her having multiple clients outside of the pimp’s social network (still in a private apartment, or in a hotel room) and eventually ends up in a window prostitution area upon becoming 18 years old. Cases NL-CC5, 8, 9, 10, 1 and 14 could be typified as domestic cases with such lover-boy modus, and without an extensive criminal network, although these cases differ in their number of victims per case – from one victim (NL-CC8) to two (NL-CC9 and 10) and three (NL-CC5). Moreover, in one of these cases (NL-CC1&14) two pimps seemingly worked together as their respective victims overlapped and claimed to be working for three pimps of the same ethnic background. Although this might point towards a more organised form of domestic trafficking, we still classify it in the first category; there was no international component, the degree of organisation seemed to be still relatively low and the modus operandi clearly matched the other cases in this category.
The second type are run by Dutch perpetrators as well, but they exhibit a larger degree of organisation and, moreover, often have an international component in the sense that (some of) the traffickers’
victims are coming from abroad. The trafficker or pimp, who has
Dutch nationality or has a stable residence permit in the Netherlands,
employs third parties to facilitate part of the work. He might, thus,
outsource tasks such as: a) recruiting girls18 in (generally) eastern Europe;
b) transporting girls to the Netherlands; c) assisting the girl – once in the Netherlands – to acquire a tax number, inscribe at the Chamber of Commerce or a housing corporation, or rent a window; d) offering one’s home address as postal address; e) driving the girl to the (window) prostitution area; f) other small services, such as buying condoms and lubricants, et cetera. The victims in these cases are Dutch girls, girls from eastern Europe, Greece or another EU country that is linked, for example, to the migratory roots of the perpetrator. Case NL-CC4 (and see also NL-CC6 and 11) is an example of this type: two men who appear to be friends and know each other’s victims, and who have overlapping acquaintances who are in the pimping business as well, exploit two (possibly three) women in one and the same prostitution area in a Dutch town. From their court files it becomes clear that they probably both run their own businesses, but do spend time together, giving each other advice and going to brothels together. Both of them employ third parties to facilitate their businesses and some of these third parties even overlap. By way of illustration, one exploiter demands a female sex worker to assist his newly recruited girl in renting a window and other administrative tasks in return for a small fee. Likewise, the exploiter maintains professional relationships both with a recruiter in another European country and with a Dutch taxi driver who brings the girl to the prostitution area. The other exploiter, in his turn, pays someone to offer his postal address to the girl, et cetera. The lover-boy tactic might initially play a role here as well – in the sense of making the girl fall in love, as well as isolating her by taking her identity papers, smashing laptops, mobile phones, et cetera – but the women are generally older and more experienced than in the above type case, and consequently show more resilience and initiative. Interesting in this regard is that we found examples of online recruitment (e.g. NL-CC4). The means of coercion may include severe violence, or the threat of violence (e.g. “Wherever you go, I will find you and I will kill you,” NL-CC4) but can also involve subtler modes of persuasion, for instance through pointing out the opportunity to earn a lot of money and applying some form of debt bondage (i.e. she is told that she owes him money for the travel, rent, et cetera). There are also examples of victims with a religious or conservative background being forced by the threat of exposure (e.g. by pictures taken, NL-E5, 6). The means of coercion show an important difference with the next type of trafficking for sexual purposes: threats of violence are in the above type generally limited to the victim herself (as that is the only person within easy reach of the Dutch pimp), whereas in the following category, they may extend to family members in east European home countries.
18 In the cases studied, only girls figured as victims. Also in the larger sample of cases we have not come across a case in which the victim was a man/boy.
In the third category we find cases in which both victims and pimps or
perpetrators come from abroad, mainly eastern Europe – particularly
Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria (e.g. NL-E1, , , 5, 6 and NL-E14). The prostitution business they run is generally a family business (as we already claimed in section 1 of this report) and some respondents (e.g. NL-E14) mentioned the Roma origin of some of these families. Case NL-CC1 is a clear example of this, as both the pimp and his victim are of Romanian origin. Information from the police surveillance (namely telephone taps) clearly shows that the pimp’s family members in Romania are involved in the business, as the mother regularly calls to discuss how business goes, and the father sends new girls to the pimp, who stays in the Netherlands. The interviewed lawyer, NL-E14, also comments on this type of trafficking:
“It is often a family. Father and son, uncle and who-knows-whom. Or they come from the same village, are neighbours and the brother of the one is married to the sister of the other, that kind of cross-connections. Brothers-in-law… yes, family relations. (…) [Sometimes the victim has been] the girlfriend of one of them and there is also a child. And the child then stays with the mother of one of her pimps. Awful constructions which make it very difficult to press charges. (…) A couple of women in this situation do not see their children anymore.”
The trafficking network is generally quite flexible; when one of its members gets arrested, another family member (son, brother, nephew, son-in-law, NL-E14) will take over. There is some kind of hierarchy in the sense that the head of a family runs the business from the source country, but apart from that, the network is flexible and can easily adapt. Victims are oftentimes also part of the family as the wives or girlfriends of the pimps. Coercion strategies generally coincide with authority and gender structures in these families, or, if the victims are unrelated, with local perceptions of such families as powerful and dangerous.
The fourth and last category was mentioned to us in our interviews with the police and FIU-the Netherlands (NL-E1, & , and NL-E11 & 1, see also: OM 016; Van Reisen et al., 01: 0-), and consists of trafficking cases related to migration routes from the African
continent and the Middle East.19 (This might have to do with the fact
that our files were from the Region Middle Netherlands. Cases related to refugee and migration routes might rather be found at regions next to the Dutch border or those which have an airport.) The above-mentioned migration and refugee flows coming from these regions (and our FIU-the Netherlands respondents, NL-E11 & 1 particularly mentioned Libya as an area where both smuggling and trafficking take place) produce a vulnerable population which consists of easy targets for traffickers and smugglers.
We have summarised the above-mentioned types or categories in Table 1. It should be taken into account that our case-study sample is not
representative for the illegal market as a whole; after all, only a limited number of files could be studies, and they were all from one region in the Netherlands. Moreover, some cases might exhibit such organisational sophistication that they are less easily identified and investigated – such cases existing in the Netherlands are illustrated by the Sneep and Koolvis cases, for example (see footnote 11). Therefore, Table 1 should not be read as an extensive overview of all possible forms of trafficking organisations in the Netherlands, but, rather, as a categorisation of the cases studied in this research.
Таble . Typology of cases of human Trafficking for sexual exploiTaTion sTudied in This research
Source: File research & interviews, Oude Breuil, Schaap & Merz, 2018.
Case type name Trafficker Foreign/ Domestic
Trafficked Foreign/ Domestic
Family
business? organisationLevel of Outsourcing
Domestic lover-boy cases D D No Low; individual business No, barely Dutch/foreign organised cases
D D&F No Employ one or
more facilitators
Yes, one or more tasks Foreign family
businesses
F F Yes Family network
structure; everyone his/her own task; patriarch on top
Yes, several tasks within family
Foreign,
migration-related cases
F F ? Network structure Yes, flexible
network with diverse partners
3.1. Source of capital for initiating/sustaining criminal
operations. Access to capital in critical moments
Sources of capital for initiating operations of labour exploitation are limited as workers are often put to work in the exploiters’ own company, which can be seen as a vehicle for recruitment. Payments to arrange travel, first residence and work, which go as “brokerage fees,” are used as starting capital. This implies that no further investments are needed. In the case of several exploited Hungarian workers (NL-CRP5), victims had to pay a €70 brokerage fee in advance, followed by €60 weekly for accommodation in housing provided by the exploiters. Job trainings are commonly used to finance labour exploitation activities among temporary
3. FINANCING AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
employment agencies (NL-E8). During periods of job trainings, workers are put to work for a certain period of time either without receiving any payment, being forced to pay for the trainings in advance or having to pay back ostensible costs at a later point in time.
As far as human trafficking for sexual exploitation is concerned, the afore-mentioned difference between domestic sexual exploitation through the lover-boy method, on the one hand, and domestic and international sexual exploitation through more complex, international trafficking structures, on the other hand (see section ) is reflected in the financial management of such forms of exploitation.
In domestic lover boy cases with a low level of organisation no significant
starting capital was needed. Pimps did not have a particularly large
financial base, and did not need any, as their girl(s) would, once recruited, be quickly put to work. As such, her first earnings would serve as (starting) capital for paying initial expenses such as lingerie. We could argue, though, that the pimps rely on their social capital or, more particularly, their social skills in order to start their businesses. According to Baron and Markman (000: 106) “the nature of the entrepreneurs’ face-to-face interactions can strongly influence their success,” and they particularly highlight the importance of “the ability to read other persons accurately, to make a good first impression on them, and to persuade
or influence them (ibid: 107, emphasis added by us).” In these trafficking
cases, we have seen how the pimps targeted particular girls who would be susceptible to their recruitment style. In other words, the offenders were particularly good at reading their victims (NL-E14). They would then invest personal attention, time, and some money (presents) in making the girls, who would eventually engage in sex work for them socially, mentally and sometimes physically (e.g. drug addiction) dependent on them. Her falling in love with him can be seen as a result of good persuasion or influencing skills, and so can his ability to convince her to give him all, or the lion’s share of her earnings under the pretence that he would save that money for a shared apartment (NL-CC9), a nail studio for her (NL-CC9), a holiday, a car (NL-CC8) et cetera. A last resource that is possibly used as starting capital is benefit fraud. Some of our interviewees (NL-E1, , ) revealed that young pimps abuse the so-called WAJONG benefit scheme. This is a benefit meant for young people with a chronic illness or handicap.
Access to capital – in general or in critical moments – for pimps of this organisation type is mainly acquired through the girl(s) working for him. The money earned by the girl might be used to secure a new place for prostitution or access to another venue (window, brothel, massage parlour, et cetera), but, considering the low organisation degree of the business, is more generally used for the costs of living of the pimp and the girl(s). In other words: capital earned is most often spent. If the pimp needs more money, he encourages the girl – at times very coercively and violently (see also section .) – to work longer, take more clients, engage in sexual activities she dislikes (e.g. NL-CC5) or get a breast enlargement surgery and liposuction (NL-CC9). One of our expert respondents (NL-E1) came across some cases of sexual
exploitation, in which the pimp’s lawyer in the lawsuit in which one of his girls testified, was paid with the money another girl working for him earned (in prostitution).
The picture is somewhat different for the more complex Dutch/foreign and international cases. In one of the cases in which the main part of the organisational network is located in the Netherlands (NL-CC4), we have come across an interesting way to acquire starting capital:
acquiring a loan from a(n) (insurance) bank (e.g. a mortgage on an
acquired house or apartment). In this case, the person convicted of human trafficking acquired a mortgage twice – one time on a false employment declaration – for a house that the trafficked person was later lodged in. Because of the limited size of our sample of court files, we cannot presume this practice to be a common strategy. However, the example does show that the world of sexual exploitation effectively uses the legal financial market for acquiring financial means. Apart from that, we can conclude from both the cases and interviews that traffickers might use starting capital proceeding from other illegal businesses, such as a hemp plantation (NL-CC4), selling ecstasy (NL-CC5), weapons trade (NL-E14) or scams (NL-E6). For sustaining the business, we have come across two more techniques (which also apply to the domestic, low-level organisation type mentioned above): one is what we would call
scamming the (naïve) client, and the other the artificially top-ranking the internet profiles of exploited girls. As far as the first technique
is concerned, respondents NL-E5 and NL-E6 mentioned cases in which clients would pay in advance for making several appointments with the girl in a row. After the first appointment, there is no next one and the client has lost his money. Another source of revenue encountered by these respondents is the client who pities the girl and wants to buy her free. He might then pay “several thousand” but the girl will (have to) continue working anyway. Secondly, when girls are advertised on “sex service websites” such as www.kinky.nl, it can be profitable for the business to have her profile appear first on the front-page of the website. This can be artificially achieved through calling her number a multitude of times, which pimps do in order to raise her status as a sex worker and her visibility on the internet (NL-E 5, 6; NL-CC5).
As far as the foreign family business category is concerned, we further observed that social capital is an important form of starting capital here, too. The East European pimp in case NL-CC1 could rely on his family members, who were aware of his work in the Netherlands and even seemed to play a “coaching” or steering role in it. When ‘his girl’ did not earn enough money, he was reassured by his mother on the telephone that his father would soon bring him another girl. Through family bonds, more girls could be recruited, who would bring in more money. More in general, the financial investigators we interviewed (e.g. NL-E1, , ) commented that it was extremely difficult to get insights into the
capital that such family business traffickers actually own, as – partly due
to the extended family structures, within which many are involved in the business – it is hard to determine who owns what, and how that is related to the business. In that way, a trafficker can appear to have no income when his bank accounts in the source country are checked,
because his earnings or properties are hidden through inscribing them on the name of another family member.
3.2. Settlement of payments
In labour exploitation cases the traffickers have several means to acquire profit through employing legal or illegal migrant workers. We can categorise these in three revenue models, which are intricately related: i) saving on
salary costs, thereby lowering the costs of production; ii) paying few or no taxes; iii) other revenues directly extracted from labour migrants.
To start with the first, employers can reduce the costs of production to such an extent that their net profits augment by finding ways to realise more production against lower salary costs. Salaries are kept low in many different ways, for instance through a rewarding system based on piece rates instead of hour rates, by paying lower wages per hour to migrant workers compared to Dutch workers, by demanding long working days, by allowing little or no free days/hours, by ordering labourers to work weekends or overtime without paying extra and by pushing the legal possibilities of temporary or seasonal working conditions through unpaid periods of job training, spending minimal money on working conditions and fraudulently minimising the worked hours of employees. An example of the latter is the manipulation of time clocks in the Champignon case (NL-CRP10). Time clocks were used to track attendance of workers by recording their arrival and leave from work and manipulated in such ways that the time worked would appear as less than the actual working hours. Secondly, and related to paying low salaries, employers paid few or no taxes (NL-E1) as their social charges (werkgeverslasten in Dutch) remained low. Social charges, after all, are related to paid salary: if salary costs are lower, charges decrease with it.
Besides these two ways to reduce costs (i and ii) employers, in the third place, extract money in a more direct way from their employees (iii). One way is rack-renting (huisjesmelkerij in Dutch), meaning that employees are forced to rent housing facilities provided by the employers, for which the employees pay much more than the actual value of the facilities. Facilities are small, overcrowded and dirty. Water or electricity are not sufficiently provided and broken furniture is not repaired (NL-CRP4, NL-CRP5). A paradoxical means of exploitation related to this – which has been recognised by McGauran et al. (016) as a form of labour exploitation – is providing not enough work to labour migrants. Back in their home countries, the workers signed a contract – the aforementioned all-inclusive package deal which covered travel, housing facilities, working contract – that included a certain number of working hours, which is necessary to be able to pay for all the expenses and have some residual earnings. If, consequently, the working hours are less than promised, but the expenses (e.g. housing and subsistence) remain the same, labour migrants find themselves in an unfortunate situation, and the employer ends up earning without spending any money. Subsequently, housing facilities become a revenue model for exploiters. According to McGauran et al. (016), this should be interpreted as exploitation as well. We have, moreover, found examples in both file research and interviews (e.g.
NL-CRP, NL-E8) of exploited labour migrants being forced to pay fines for “infractions of the rules” (e.g. being late for work, making a phone call during working hours, accidentally damaging property, et cetera), or being forced to spend part of their earnings on meals provided by the employer (NL-CRP10), or in supermarkets owned by the employer. Debt
bondage also recurs in our cases as a mechanism to profit from labour
migrants. In this context, debts incurred by travel costs, fines, lack of work or outstanding rent of housing facilities are involved.
Another direct way to extract money from labour migrants is by having their salary directly sent to the exploiter’s or a family member’s
(of the exploiter) bank account. Alternatively, they are in possession of
the workers’ money cards and pin codes and therefore are directly in command of their earnings (e.g. NL-CRP5, NL-CRP7, NL-E8, NL-E9). In one case (NL-CRP5), a total of € ,09 – in wages for Hungarian employees was paid in 009 and 010 by various temporary employment agencies on a bank account number of the exploiter. Furthermore, €19,00 of the amount was withdrawn by the exploiters via ATMs in the Netherlands and Hungary; an act which itself can be interpreted as “converting” the money. Profits emerging from accommodation are usually collected weekly. Labour migrants need to pay off their brokerage fees with their work. It is oftentimes completely unclear to the victims whether, and if so, to what extent their salary was set off against the debts that they had with the exploiters (NL-CRP5) as labour migrants have no insight in the administration. Blackmailing and threatening are commonly used strategies, either with or without use of physical violence, to ensure they get their money. In the case of illegal labour migrants, their illegality and fear of authorities is oftentimes used to keep workers quiet (Van Ellemeet 007). Exploiters threaten to inform the police or, in the case of relatives being the victims, send them back to their country of origin.
As far as sexual exploitation is concerned, most pimps – irrespective of the category or type of sex trafficking (see section ) – have
non-transparent, dynamic “agreements” with the women working for them.
For example, in case NL-CC4, the girl who came from a Central European country to the Netherlands for work – the pimp had paid her travel expenses – had been told that she could earn up to €1,000 or €,000 a day as a sex worker in the red-light district of a Dutch town. She supposedly owed the pimp €,000 for domiciling her on an address in the town and for the rent of the window. Until that sum of money would be paid off, she would first hand over all her earnings, then 70% of it, and once paid off, she would pay him 50% of her earnings, plus the rent of the apartment where she stayed when she was not working. Another girl in the same case (belonging to pimp number two in this case) agreed to paying half of the rent of their apartment, but she was informed that the rent was €1,400, whereas it was only €900. Generally, we can conclude that in most cases we came across victims did not precisely know how much they earned, spent, and handed over, or how large their debt to the trafficker was. This might very well be a conscious tactic of the trafficker: the less she knew about her earnings in relation to what he received, the better.
Another common strategy to make sure the girl would hand over the money was constant close supervision and control. To illustrate, the pimp would call or WhatsApp the girl constantly (in most of the cases studied), would ask her to take pictures of herself in the street where she was supposed to see a client (NL-CC5), or would watch her from the other side of the street (NL-CC1), in order to keep track of how much she was probably earning and whether that matched the money handed over. Some pimps set a target for the girl to earn every night, and she was not supposed to come home before the target was reached (NL-CC4, NL-CC5). Besides that, several forms of threats and violence were imposed upon the victims in order to make them comply with the rules and discipline them into handing over their money. To name but a few methods that appeared throughout the studied cases: threatening to hurt or kill the victim or her family, severe physical and sexual abuse, mental abuse (making the girl feel bad about herself if she does not earn a certain amount of money), damaging her property, in particular mobile phones, laptops, et cetera, in order to isolate her, taking away identity papers, having the girl place a tattoo with his name or initials on it, inventing fictive debts, et cetera.
3.3. Costs for doing business
As stated in section ., labour exploitation cases are characterised by saving on salary costs, taxes and other revenues directly extracted from workers. Seeing that the operating expenses are nominal, the benefits usually outweigh the costs of doing business. Costs for advertisements
and recruiting are minimal due to the widespread use of website,
newspaper advertisements and social media in the Netherlands and abroad. Besides, labour migrants are often family members or acquaintances of the recruiter. Methods of recruitment are therefore largely based on intermediary contacts and word of mouth. As mentioned earlier, housing is oftentimes arranged via family members or other accomplices and labour migrants are accommodated under poor conditions. Although housing is a cost post for traffickers, at the same time, it functions as a basic revenue model.
Although companies run the risk of making costs due to investigations run by authorities – they may need to pay fines for providing insufficient labour conditions, or spend time and money on inventing and applying fraudulent administrative constructions – we also found a case of labour exploitation (NL- CRP) in which the employers gave instructions to workers about what to say in case of visits by the Labour Inspectorate. In this particular case, the costs they would eventually face due to labour inspectorate controls were limited by training workers for such incidents, and limit the damage.
In the sexual exploitation cases studied, we have encountered the following possible costs. Of course, these depend on the degree of organisation of the trafficking network (or lack of it). First of all, there are costs related to the recruitment of the girls. In one-man trafficking activities, these might include buying the girl presents, costs for personal
image management (golden necklaces, rented cars, et cetera) and parties. Advertising the girl on the internet also can involve payments to webhosts and costs for photographs. In international trafficking businesses, recruitment might involve paying for advertisements on the internet and in local newspapers to attract girls to the job, or paying a third, local party to arrange for that.0 Costs will also be involved
for transporting the girl(s) to the Netherlands and housing her once arrived. When a girl comes from abroad, there are administrative costs, such as registering her in the municipality and on a fixed address. The pimp then has to rent a window (in window prostitution) or pay for
hotel rooms or other locations to work along with paying subsistence costs and costs related to the job (such as for condoms, lubricants,
lingerie et cetera). Next, telephone costs will be made in order to groom, control and supervise the girl(s). Depending on the size and “professionalism” of the business, traffickers might further need to pay
their facilitators. For example, in NL-CC4 one of the traffickers paid
a (sex worker) associate €00 for helping “his” girl acquire a window and informing her on the ins and outs of the job. The other trafficker, in the same case, paid €50 to a man who would go with the girl to the municipality to have her registered at his home address. From our sample of cases, but also from large national signal cases such as the Sneep case (see footnote 11), we know that costs might also be incurred through abortions, tattoos, breast implants et cetera. Last but not least, traffickers of foreign, family-business type of trafficking bear the expense of transporting the money back home (see next section).
Moreover, there are costs when getting caught. Table mentions the amounts to be paid in the cases where a fine, or compensation to the victim(s) was imposed (as far as these came to the fore in the files studied).
0 We have not come across the exact prices paid to these facilitators.
Таble 2. compensaTions To vicTims imposed on Traffickers
Case Total Sum Material damage Immaterial Damage Amount per victim NL-CC4 €17,100 1,100 5,000 (to 1 victim)*
NL-CC5 €15,45. Not indicated Not indicated Victim 1: €6,9 Victim : €7,564.40 Victim : €1,559.9
NL-CC6 €1,00 Not indicated Not indicated (to 1 victim)
NL-CC7 €,609.4 €1,109.4 €1,500 (to 1 victim)
3.4. Profits and profit sharing
Profits in labour exploitation cases, and especially in those cases in which migrants are employed in the exploiter’s legal business, are typically re-invested and laundered in the exploiter’s business. In the case of the involvement of temporary employment agencies, profits can emerge on two ends: the temporary employment agency and the hiring company. In organised cases of labour exploitation involving cross-border exploitation, profits are (partly) transferred abroad (NL-E14).
In sexual exploitation cases, again, profit making, spending, and sharing depends on the type of trafficking organisation. The first type of domestic, low-organised, lover-boy technique trafficker is said by our respondents to mainly spend the profits on partying, expensive cars, watches, trademark clothing, gambling, drugs, et cetera, as exemplified in the responses of NL-E1 and NL-E:
NL-E1: “The lover-boys? They spend it all. They do not have registered capital, no money on the bank, no property, no income. Sometimes they do have an alimony (…). They are really boasting about their money. So they spend a lot, and if they have some money, it is cash, hidden somewhere. (…) These lover-boys, they drive luxurious rented cars, they spend enormous amounts of money on that. (…) Yes, they spend on parties… it is really about bragging, the classic show-off. That’s how they also impress the girls… with the money and that big car, golden necklace, nice watch.”
NL-E: “Yes, and they also like to shop in the PC Hooftstreet: clothes, coats and Louis Vuitton toiletry bags, I encountered.”
NL-E1: “Yes, coats and jeans of €800.” NL-E: “[Calvin] Klein pants…”
From the above quotation we could also conclude that profits are, rather, invested in image and reputation.
Таble 2. compensaTions To vicTims imposed on Traffickers (conTinued)
* As explained in section 4, in the Netherlands the convicted does not pay the compensation directly to the victim, but to the Dutch state, which will pay the compensation to the victim.
Source: File research, Oude Breuil, Schaap & Merz 2018.
Case Total Sum Material damage Immaterial Damage Amount per victim NL-CC9 €704,000 Not indicated Not indicated Victim 1: €515,000
Victim : €189,47
NL-CC10 €0,000 €10,000 €10,000 (to 1 victim)
